


The Bedrock Blade

by flurrybird



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Chosen One, Gen, How To Be, Immortality, Just Born Yesterday, Worldbuilding, also some life lessons will be thrown in the future probably, and what kind of protagonist I can stuff inside of its nonexistent story, because therapy makes you think about a lot of stuff, lessons to learn, playing around with the concept of minecraft and its lore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2018-10-14 06:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10530390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flurrybird/pseuds/flurrybird
Summary: You wake up, and realize that you are alone.But you have been given a purpose by Someone Greater Than You, and you don't know what else to do but follow the only lead you have.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings: descriptions of drowning/suffocating

Your name is.

Your name is ...

You don't know your name.

Questions flood in, and then you suddenly realize that you are alone. You've always been alone.

There is darkness all around you, deep and thin and it wraps around you like water and suffocates you. It tastes of memories long forgotten and souls long lost. There are voices, whispering and crying out in the silence. They are unnerving, the voices. They fill you with an uneasiness that makes this place seem like the opposite of home. There are particles, swimming in the darkness and dancing through it, through you. You are not as solid as you once thought. Maybe you are just a part of this hydrous void, with no end and no beginning, an eternal nothing. But then, you have the ability to think, and your thoughts have beginnings and ends, so perhaps you terminate too? You decide that you are made of substance, a being with the ability to experience uneasiness, and the capacity to know what home feels like, though you have never felt it yourself. You decide that you are alive, in this darkness you can’t call home.

Then, there is a sudden light. It is big and warm and bright, and it draws you close. You can almost breathe again (though you don't really know what it is to breathe), and the voices grow quiet, you think. Or perhaps, they grow to speak more in unison. They speak with a voice that thrills through you in the gentlest way, offering comfort, safety, and love. It echoes within you, saying,

"My Child. My Dearest One. You have a Great Task ahead of You. Know always that I am with You, and My Love is in You. Wherever You are, there is My Love. Carry it with You, in Your Task, and share It with those who need It most."

You have no time to ponder these words before there is silence again, and an utter darkness, more complete than the one before. You feel yourself slipping in the watery nothingness.

You fall.


	2. Something Needed Something Gained

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You learn to walk, and to fear.

You awake with a sharp intake of breath, eyes fluttering open, and lie there as your senses are assaulted. Light floods your irises, and you have to squeeze your eyes shut against it until the imprint of it on your eyelids fades. When you can open them again, blinking, you realize that it is not as bright as you once thought it was. There is an expanse of darkness above you, though it is not as dark as the Place You Have Been, because in it there are pinpricks of bright white light that chase away the dark. They waver, as if silently saying, “Hello.”

In front of the darkness, blocking out some of these lights, are whispering green things. They form in bunches and branch off from a trunk that is firmly rooted in the ground, and you stare up at them for a while, trying to sort out your other senses.

The next thing that comes to you are the sounds. You can hear the green things brushing softly against each other far above your head, and you can hear something, many somethings, in the distance, brush through the greenness all around you. 

Grass, you think, looking sideways down at the not-sharp blades. You clench your fingers, gripping a handful and trying to rip it up, but you are too weak, and you relax again. 

You feel cold, you notice finally. Cold and wet and the wet coats your skin in little droplets that shine like … You look up again. Stars. You gather the will to raise a hand before your face and look at it, watch the droplets that slide down your arm and drip to the ground, until you can’t hold it up anymore and you let it rest on your chest. 

Everything smells fresh and new, but somewhere inside you know that all of this is older, ages older, than you. How long is an age?, you wonder, breathing in the air that you can feel freezing the droplets on your naked skin. You look down at yourself again, and finally do notice that all of you is bare. There is nothing between you and the cold, and vaguely you think that that isn’t right. You need something that will trap the warmth to your skin. You need to get up.

However, you don’t rise just yet; you’re not sure how. So you lie there, breathing in this new air, until you think you might have enough strength. 

You tense, draw one leg up, and push yourself over onto your side. You catch yourself before you can fall face-down into the grass, and then get your other hand under you. Straightening both of your arms, you push yourself up, and then you look around, holding your breath as if it’ll keep you up. Will moving always be this difficult?, you think, dreading the possibility. 

You force yourself to continue and somehow get your legs beneath you, and then you’re sitting on your calves in the grass. You breathe again, great big breaths that make your chest rise and fall like bellows. You think about how loud your breaths are, so much louder than in the Place You Have Been. Your lungs sting, and when you exhale, the sting comes out in puffs of white.  
The stars give light, but no warmth. Your whole body convulses in a shiver. The cold has invaded you, climbed into you and made a home. It is not welcome. You need a way to keep it out, for it does not belong. Maybe there is warmth somewhere else. You need to get up and walk, you decide.

How does one walk?

Perhaps, you think, you should do it slowly, as you have been. You will move step by step, until you are sure enough in it that it will take no more effort than thought. Then you will find warmth, and you will find something to tell you why you are here ...

Why are you here? 

… 

Where is here?

You look up, up at the stars that say hello, and your lips part. You taste them; the stars and their light, and exhale it in a plume. It is cold and bright, and your throat aches for it, for something that you can’t name. You need to find this something; you need to find warmth. You need to find so many, many things. But first, you need to get up. 

You put a palm on the cold, damp earth, and maneuver your feet so that they are under you. You shove upward, and wobble, but you are standing now. You have to spread your arms as you try to find your balance, your center, but you don’t fall. You are closer to the stars now, and the green whispering things. It is strange, this feeling of being tall. 

You look around you once your core has settled in its place, and your eyes find the nearest trunk that holds these green things against the sky. It is riddled with grooves, and further up you see that it splits into smaller branches, which in turn split into smaller ones, and this continues until the ragged green things sprout in clumps from the ends of them. You lean forward to look up into the branches, and nearly lose your balance again. Somehow your body moves without your thought; it catches you in a step forward. You waver, arms out once again to find the stability you had achieved before. With a surge of something like determination, you lift your other foot and take another step toward the tree. Is this what walking is? It feels unnatural, awkward … you try again anyway. 

You’ve moved a few more steps forward, and you smile because you think you have it now. You still keep your arms extended though, just in case, and this comes to be useful when your toes catch in the grass and you stumble forward again, all clumsy legs and flailing arms. You close your eyes, but it is not grass and ground that finds your cheek; it is the roughness and solid weight of the tree that supports you now. You think about pushing off of it, but decide that you are not ready to fall again right now, so you just hold it close and borrow the strength of its roots to stay upright. 

After a while of breathing in the cold starlight and of the wanting of the something out of your grasp, you straighten your arms and push away from the rough trunk. You slowly peek around the side of it when your ears detect a sound that you have not heard before. 

It’s faint, and far away, but it calls to you, and you think that it’s related to the something you’ve needed. It sounds like … well, you have nothing to compare it to, so you cast that thought aside for now and focus on moving your legs correctly again. You stumble from your first tree to your second, and your second to your third, in the direction of the whispering sound. It is not like the whispering of the leaves, though. That sound is rougher than this. This sound is…

Is…

It’s like the sound starlight would make, you think, if starlight ever made a sound.

You fall into the grass between your third and fourth standing-trees, and you feel disappointment for the first time. You had been doing so well. 

You are in the midst of finding a way up again, your rear end sticking up into the air while your hands remain on the ground, when there is an entirely new sound. It is not like starlight, and not like leaves. 

You feel fear, and drop into the grass. 

The sound is as if a hole has been ripped in your ears and a hungry wind is blowing through-- a dangerous wind, that has swallowed whole stars and yet hungered for more of an end to their light. You look up and ahead of you, and see skin that is almost the color of the Void. The Void-skin strangles a harsh figure, all hard edges and brittle-steely bones. Some warning in you makes you look down again, into the dirt. The thing warbles high above you, then disappears with another awful sound. You cover your ears, closing your eyes and whimpering. It’s the first sound you ever make.

The creature is gone, but the fear stays. 

You open your eyes after a while of silence and whispering leaves, then look around you carefully. You are ready to drop your gaze again should the creature come back, but for now it seems that you are safe. 

You get up without much ceremony, though there is a heavy pounding in your chest and your throat feels tight. The sound from before, that had drawn you in this direction in the first place, comes back into your recognition. You wander in its direction once again, fighting the angry cold, and come upon a small brook. It babbles up at you from your feet, and you almost feel compelled to say something back. But you wouldn’t know how to anyway, so you just drop to your knees beside it in the sandy mud, and lean over its rippling surface. 

You see an image of you in the crystal clear substance that ripples with moonlight, but it’s too shaky to make anything out. You see the stars, though, and their “Hello’s”. You lift your hand, and wave down at them in the water. 

Water…

You remember from another time and place what this substance is, and that you need it. You are so very thirsty... You shift your legs under you, and lean down to dip your face into the water, but are greeted with stinging unpleasantness. 

COLD!

You immediately surge back, crystal droplets following your chin in an arc. You shake your head, and then stop, because the frantic motion hurts behind your eyes. Water trails down your face, and you instinctively catch a few drops on your tongue. It tastes like nothing, but it is delicious. You try again, taking a handful of the icy liquid and bringing it up to your lips. You only manage to get a little, though, because it runs betweens your fingers and travels back down to its source.  
You wonder why you are not like water. You think about the Place Before, but feel no want to return, only curiosity about your new world. Is this strange? You’re not sure. 

You sit there for a moment, contemplating, then blink and reach down to grab another handful of water. You can’t feel your fingertips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next update: 4/30/17


	3. First Confrontation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is very short and for that I apologize... i thought that two weeks would be enough time, but this fic took a backseat to other things in my life during those two weeks. i'll try to have a longer update next time!

After filling yourself with as much water as you can take, you work on standing again.

 

_ What now? _

 

It is a good question. What now, indeed, for now you realize that you are a creature with the power to Be, but no purpose to your newfound power. You plant your feet firmly in the grass and feel the springy blades between your toes, thinking. You think of the Place Before This, and then that logically leads you to think of Her-- your Powergiver and Lifebringer. 

 

_ They call her the Void Mother. She is a being of pure energy and life, who exists in inexistence, and you are of Her creation. _

 

You stare into the distance, and wonder where this burst of insight has come from. The words came to you, as if they were starlight shining through leafy branches of confusion and newfound thought, but you don’t know where exactly from.

 

As you are staring ahead, you see a light between the trees. You realize this with a jolt that nearly makes you lose your footing as you come back to awareness of the cold and the hunger. You catch yourself, arms outstretched again, until your balance is found. The light flickers, like the stars, but it is a warmer light.  _ Warmth. _ Your body aches for it, and it moves without your conscious thought. You take many steps back, away from the water, and bend and brace, summoning up your energy. When a wave of adrenaline crashes over your head, you find your heels are kicking up dirt, and the grass is lost beneath your feet as you  _ run _ . You clear the stream in a bound that takes you closer to the stars than you have been before. But then, you are falling. 

 

You crash into the mud, and pain sears into your shoulder and through your knee. It is an unpleasant warmth, like burning, when you sit up in the mud and look at your skin, which is angry and red. A deeper red seeps from the scratches as you wipe away the muck. There is a wetness in your eyes and a tightness in your throat from the pain. You wipe your eyes with the back of your hand, which is not so muddy, and try to stand up. The mud is slippery, though, and you fall a few times, before deciding that it would be best to crawl out instead of relying on your two feet. Soon, the ground is hard again, and you stand, dirty and crying and cold. 

 

But the warmer light still beckons, and it is closer now.

 

You move forward again, drying your eyes with muddy hands and sniffling in the silence, until there is a shriek from beside you, and a creature with many legs and many eyes clambers down a tree trunk in your direction. Its dark carapace makes your skin crawl, and the malicious lack of feeling in its eyes makes your fibers tense. You start to run again-- except now, you are limping. It is fast, but you are just barely faster in your fear. You can hear its chittering in the grass behind you; it skitters across the ground in its haste to catch you. You can’t see it, only the light ahead and the trees whipping past, but you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end as if it is a leaf-length away from catching your ankles in its pincers. You duck your head, and clear the trees.

 

The light ahead is as if a red, flickering star has been caught and tied to a stick, which has then been placed in a crag in a rocky wall. You slow, mesmerized by its light, but the crashing of many legs through the underbrush gets you moving forward again. You reach the rock wall and the starstick within moments, and instinct makes you pick up the dead end of it. It’s warm, and this fills you with a kind of determination. 

 

Turning on your heel, you swing the stick out in front of you-- just as the spider leaps for your neck. The star sizzles and bites away the creature’s dark bone-skin, coming alive and opening its maw to eat the creature in one piece. The spider’s shrieks mingle with a sizzling sound as it flies away from the force of your turning, then rights itself, and comes around for another attack. You swing your new weapon, motivated by only a desire to survive, and catch the side of the spider’s face. Its eyes are burning now. It shrieks and backs away, and you are victorious. 

 

You watch the spider scuttle in circles as you finally notice that something in your core is doing uncomfortable somersaults, and something else between your lungs beats rapidly against the walls of your chest. You feel the urge to cry again as the spider flees, because you are confused and scared and alone. You can barely breathe; you are so overwhelmed by emotion and physical feeling.  _ Breathing. Breathing is at the start of it all. _

 

You try to focus, bringing the starstick closer to your body to let its warmth radiate out and into you. Your feet find a path until your back is at the rock of the wall, and you sit with the warmth in your hands. It heats your face, and heats the tears that pool and flow down your cheeks. 

 

You sit for a long while and breathe, and the fire, because that’s what you remember it’s called, grows dimmer in your possession. Your eyelids drift closed, but you are presented with a memory of the Place You Have Been, so you open them again. You don’t want to think about that place, because you are afraid that you will want to return, like water to its source. You stop yourself before you try to remember what it was like there, in the Void, being everything and nothing at once … and then you realize that your fire has gone out. 

 

It is a dead stick in your hands now, charred and useless. The cold starts to creep into your bones again. You struggle until you are standing, and nearly throw the stick aside, but something causes you to stop and think. 

  
There is another light, through the trees again. It flickers like the one before, the one that is dead in your hands now. You rub your injured shoulder lightly, staring into the distance, and decide to move toward it. You have nowhere else to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next update: 5/21/17


	4. Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the day-late upload! yesterday was busy for me, and Bedrock Blade completely left my mind .... whoops. but, i hope you find this chapter intriguing. please leave a comment!

The grass is cool beneath the soles of your feet, and the dead stick sways at your side. You have been walking for a while, and your steps are slow. You feel weak, now that the rushing of your blood has worn off. Your fingertips tremble, involuntarily tapping the wood and the back of your shoulder, both of which you hold gingerly. 

The cold is even more invasive, now that you have known warmth. It creeps like the spider, but slower and more menacing. This cold is a killer too. 

The light you have been travelling toward, this trapped fire, is similar to what the dead one in your hand once was. You exit the cover of the trees and see the stars again, but they are unattainable, so you focus on the fire that is propped in the rock of the hill. It flickers happily, and instills in you a sense of safety. You stare at it for a while, then bring your own stick up to it out of curiosity. Your dead sticks catches life again, and coats your arm in warmth. 

Something glistens to your right, behind a cover of green leaves and vines that have grown over it. Or perhaps, you think, someone has placed these here, to hide this glistening thing? But why would they do that?  _ Who is they? _

You ponder on this as you scratch and pull the vines away, leaf by leaf. Some kind of cold, flat surface is revealed beneath your searching hands. You pull away more, and the green falls to the ground in pieces, to be trampled by your numbing feet. You can almost see your dull reflection in the gray surface, but it’s more dark shapes and light from your firestick than anything else. 

You touch the smooth surface, rolling your palm over it.  There is an edge to the right of it-- a line between dirt and alien metal, so you dig your fingertips in and pull. It hurts to do so and the plane doesn’t move, so you stop. You prop your firestick against a stone by the ground, then try again with two hands. Though you are weak, the door budges. 

It swings open on rough hinges when you apply more force, and behind it, you find a dark tunnel into the hillside. You stare into the darkness, presented with a choice. 

Taking your firestick into your hand again, you walk into the unknown. 

After a few steps you find that the ground seems to be sloping downward, deeper into the hill. Your fire casts shadows on the strangely smooth walls. It flickers and waves in the breeze that comes from deep within the hill, like foul breath from some dark beast. 

You walk for a long while, and the bare skin of your feet quietly and rhythmically scuffs the stone. The slope becomes cut stairs, and then the stairs end, and a hallway of carved bricks stretches before you, now illuminated by many more firesticks set in sconces on the walls.  _ Torches,  _ you think.

The sight of the empty hallway fills you with unease, and you almost consider turning back. But you feel something pulling you forward. It’s like there is a rope around your waist, and someone on the other end is tugging, hungrily. You linger on the edge of stepping forward, and then give in.

As you walk down the hallway, you see that it branches off here and there, into less well-lit corridors, and some of the corridors are blockaded with bars of metal. Gurgles and growls come from these hollow branches of stone, which send you against the opposite wall to avoid them. You don’t know what kind of creatures they come from, but the withered hands in the dark, clawing at the air in your direction, give you an idea. 

You keep walking, and with each step your faith flees further. It is only slightly warmer down here, and you wonder if it’s worth it. Then, you hear them. There are voices ahead of you, hushed and low, but they speak words that you think you could recognize if only you could hear them properly. It’s a droning sound, rhythmic-- and it thrums in your chest. You stop to listen for a moment. The torch flickers in your hand.

Then, you find the ability to walk forward, and the chanting grows louder in your ears. It fills your chest with reverberating sound, but somehow, you still can’t say what words might be being spoken. It’s a language you know, but it’s as if the alignment of syllables is nonsensical enough to throw you off the trail of its meaning. Your torch flickers with the rhythm of the words,  _ if they are words _ , and the breath from the deep. You watch the fire warily, because you have seen what it can do, and keep walking. 

The breeze grows stronger and the torches on the walls grow less numerous. It’s a wind now, and it blows against your skin. But now you can feel that it is a hot wind.  _ A hot wind underground _ ? you ask yourself. The feeling from before grabs at your bones, pulling you in.  _ But into what? _

There are so many questions that buzz and whir about your head as you continue to take step after step toward an unknown destination. Any idea of turning around has left, chased away by curiosity and this unknown gravitational pull that drags you forward. Your torch goes out in the wind, leaving you alone again. It is you and the wind and the voices that speak as one. 

The voices have grown to be almost deafening. There is a light ahead as well. Your steps quicken, as does your heart. The light is not complete, you see, as you near its source. It dances around static shadows which waver, like people made of darkness. The chanting stops when your shadow is cast among them, which causes you to stop, though the force still pulls you in. 

The wind has changed directions now, pushing at your back with force enough to knock you down. Somehow, you remain standing, though you lean against the wall as it opens into a larger room. The men in front of you are draped in cloaks like the skin of the VoidWalker from before turned into cloth. They stand around a pool of molten rock in the floor, which is ringed by floating stone, the likes of which you’ve never seen before. It is like the color of the sun, but more sickly and diseased. 

The stones are draped themselves with a film of blue and purple, with metal stone-settings that are empty, but beckon to be filled. This must be the source that has drawn you in, you think, and you feel fear again. This is a bad place. You turn to leave, but are blasted by the hot wind, and then you feel warm hands grasping at your arms and shoulders from behind, pulling you bodily toward the magma and the sickly stone. The only thing you can think between the terror and struggling is that  _ this is not the kind of warmth you wanted _ .

You are forced down on the stone, which digs into your injured shoulder and makes you cry out in pain. One of the men, with skin like leather, stands over you. You can’t see his hands until a gleam of metal appears at the edge of your vision. You panic, writhing under the many other hands that trap you down, and the chanting starts again, filling your ears with terrifying volume. It is the men that make this ominous sound, but there is a great evil behind their voices. 

There is a chilling cold across your throat, and then a searing warmth. You choke and gurgle. As your vision tunnels into complete darkness, you wonder at your first word.

  
“No …”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief hiatus due to graduation


	5. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been months. i know. thanks to you, who are reading this anyway. you keep me going.

There is a roaring above you-- a sound that could rend earth and sky from each other’s embrace. You look up, and see a great being of fangs and terror flying over a land of stone the color of sunlight, but sickly. You look down, and find yourself standing on a pillar made of rock that is as dark as the space between the stars. The ground is far beneath you, so far that if you jumped, you think you would not survive the fall. But you cannot move to jump anyway. You are frozen, still in time and outside of it. 

Your attention is drawn back to the beast like light is drawn into a black hole. At this moment it is nothing more than a silhouette against the sky without stars, barely visible in the dark. But still, it roars. Its roar sends fear through you. It is like nothing else you have ever heard. 

You find yourself wishing for the voices in the Void-- wondering if they might protect you in this place of sickness and fear. 

The dragon circles wide around you, and you feel a change. It knows you are here now.  _ But why are you here?  _ you ask the darkness and sickly light. The dragon is coming closer now, you can see the span of its terrible wings and hear the rushing of air as it moves them.  _ Is there air in this place? _ you wonder.  _ If you can breathe, then surely there must be. But are you really breathing?  _

You try to look down, but there is no body beneath you. You are fluid again, part of the nothingness, and not a part at all. 

_ Are you really here? _

Now, the dragon is close enough that you can feel the invisible tugging of the undertow of its wings. It roars, deafeningly loud. You are assaulted with the smell of war and death, of burning flesh and running rivers of blood. Your vision is filled with images that you don’t want to see. They are terrible and awful, red and onyx with destruction and carnage.

“See. See what I can do,” the dragon seems to say. 

Then, you feel the wind rush against you. You are falling now. You close your eyes. 


End file.
